Are 3D Surf Clips, Shot on a Phone, About to be a Thing?

If you, like most human surfers in the year 2018, spent some portion (see: an embarrassing amount) of your week sliding through wave-and-surf-celebrity-rich Instagram stories, then odds are you've seen a number of posts by famed wave riders featuring something called a RED HYDROGEN One. While this may sound like the name of something very dangerous that the government may or may not have tested in the Bikini Atoll in the 1950s, it is, in fact, a phone—or at least some version of one.

Unlike every other smartphone on earth presently, the HYDROGEN One has a camera that can shoot both regular 2D photos and videos, as well as 3D stills and motion as well. That's all made more interesting by the fact that the Hydrogen's screen allows you to also watch this stuff in 3D, on your phone, without those ridiculous-looking plastic glasses they give children—and weird adults—at movie theaters. RED calls this a "4-View Lightfield Display" which is "Powered by Nanotechnology"—in other words, it's pretty high-tech stuff. They top off the viewing experience with an A3D multi-dimensional surround sound system that emits a "sound field that surrounds and stuns the senses."

The RED Hydrogen One, sometimes mistaken for the monolith from “2001: A Space Odyssey”.

It should come as no surprise that such a seemingly-alien device should come from RED, the same company that more or less revolutionized surf filmmaking over the past decade. The quality of digital cinematography in surfing varied widely in the late 2000s, but fast forward to present and all the best surfers, from Dane Reynolds to John Florence and beyond, almost exclusively use RED cameras to capture every turn and air and water droplet down to the sharpest detail. And much like those high-end cameras, the HYDROGEN One is a modular device, which means you can take it apart and add cool shit to it, like a power pack to extend battery life, or a different lens or more data storage.

At this point, the question you're probably asking yourself is, "So when the hell are we gonna see John John do a backflip over us in 3D?" The answer to that, we can only guess at. But considering the fact that RED has already put the HYDROGEN in the hands of JJF, as well as Jordy Smith, Kolohe Andino and Julian Wilson (just to name a few out of a long list of heavy hitters), it seems inevitable that someone is going to put this thing in a waterhousing and bag an internet-breaking clip on it—the only kicker is you'll need to have to have a Hydrogen One (or a pair of goofy ass 3D glasses) to really appreciate it.